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Friday, October 5, 2012

the 10 minute bracelet

Happy Friday! Just wanted to share with you a cute, simple bracelet that I made today.

It's pretty simple, but I think it's cute! Plus, I didn't have to mess with any itty bitty beads.

To make this bracelet, you just need about 4' of light weight cord in two colors, so 8' total (I used bamboo, but you can use nylon, or even just embroidery floss if you'd like), 20" of round leather cording, and some type of craft glue. These measurements are for about a 7" bracelet, but you can adjust to the size of your own wrist.

To start the bracelet, take your cording and fold it in exact half and pinch about 1/2" down from the top to create a loop.

Then, take your two colors of cording and tie a knot around your leather cording where you have created the loop.

You may have a bit of extra cording here, so you can trim this to about 3/4".

Fold down that 3/4" piece and start wrapping your colored cording around both pieces of leather cording, and your 3/4" piece. Try to keep your colored cords in the same order the whole way down; it creates a nice pattern. Continue this for about 1".

Now, take your cords and start looping them like a figure 8 between your two pieces of leather cording. Over...

...under...

...around...

...back under...

...repeat!

Continue doing this until you are about an inch from the full length you want your bracelet to be. I chose to make mine with all the criss-crosses right up against each other, but you can also seperate them a bit to see your leather cording. You won't need quite as much light-weight cording if you go this route.

Remember how you wrapped the colored cording around the leather cording at the beginning of this bracelet? Do that again for about 1", and then tie a knot.

Separate the two pieces of cording and wrap around and tie another knot on the other side.

Now, take your leather cording and tie a knot. This will be what goes through your loop on the other end to hold your bracelet on.

Trim both sets of cording - both lightweight colored and leather.

Now, it's glue time! Put a dab of glue on each end of each of your knots to secure them.

And, place a dab of glue under the lightweight, colored cording by the loop at the other end to keep it secure.

And there you have it! A quick, simple bracelet!

This could be a great men's bracelet as well, probably with different colors. :)